What’s your credo? Are you able – am I able – to condense in to just a few lines the standards by which you try to live along with the things you believe to be most important?
The thought has been rolling around in my head since I came across Ben Brooks’s credo a while back:
Less is more
There are no half-assed solutions
Readability is of utmost importance
We are who we are
Working 40 hours is unnecessary
Being creative is necessary
I was fascinated – and impressed – to see that he’d included the point about readability. Unfortunately, it’s not something that many of us would elevate to the level of being part of a personal credo. Or if we did, we’d probably present it as yellow typeface on a white background…
Anyway, whilst I could have happily signed up to Ben’s list as my own, I preferred to look around a wee bit more. I’m glad I did because I came across Tony Schwartz’s Ten Principles to Live by in Fiercely Complex Times on the HBR blog. Three in particular resonated with me:
- Always challenge certainty, especially your own.
- If you do what you love, the money may or may not follow, but you’ll love what you do.
- You can’t change what you don’t notice and not noticing won’t make it go away.
So, rolling all of this together, I’ve had a go at drafting my own credo:
- Challenge certainty
- Be curious and look for the unexpected1
- Empathy and humility are worth striving for
- Love at least 60% of what you do in your day job
- Ignite the imagination2
I’d be fascinated to get your thoughts and opinions.
6 Comments
Great blog entry. I am especially interested in “if you do what you love, the money may or may not follow, but you will love what you do” and “being creative is necessary”.
There is a great challenge, as I see it, in persuing what you love if there is little money to be found (and here I am talking about even a minimum “survival in the west” standard). So can we keep loving what we love if it keeps us permanently materially poor, or is that relative poorness by itself going to keep me from being creative?
Thus, your “love at least 60 % of what you do in your day job” seems to me a great compromise. To me that is a “good enough” kind of credo, realising that “ok, I might not be able to fully live on what I love the most, and I don’t fully love what I do the most (dayjob), but it is good enough for me”. I really like it. For me, that is like satisfying both sides, having an ok day job and thus getting the peace-of-mind needed (that I need!) to spend time on what I need to do (creativity).
Thanks again for a great thought provoking entry!
A Roman mantra says: Le chiacchiere stanno a zero (Idle talk is rated zero). Which goes along with: Whoever wastes my time is a murderer, as he/she makes my life shorter (this is not Roman, it’s mine).
All five points good examples Tom. Only the arbitrariness of that 60% could be perhaps questionable.
What I’m particularly liking from your entries are the links you provide. A great plus.
As of myself, I haven’t really thought much about such thing, a credo. I certainly have some standards, but find it hard to summarise them so neatly as you did.
Once I ran into a song line which could make do for a perfect summary: Put a little light in your day.
There’s a related photograph on that.
Beautifully succinct, Toni – and a wonderful one line credo. Love it!
“Empathy and humility are worth striving for” is my best choice. And I try to love 100% of what I do during the day, otherwise I would shoot myself!
I love your credo….. and I esp love that your postings always have a sort of nudge to think about familiar things in an unfamiliar way if that makes any sensible sense!
The second to the last article in your credo: “Love at least 60% of what you do in your day job” … makes me think a bit like Daniela above. There are some things in my job that are totally not my “forte” and… they have become my greatest “friends” because of what they have gifted me with… Even though by nature they would not be my first loves, they have been more love bestowing than many fun things… maybe something about the challenge that has required a bit more “love”…
My credo also has this one:
gratitude and generosity are keys to abundance in life.
(Not cheep stuff like money [handy as it is] but real life-enhancing stuff)
And (PS) I have found that looking through the lens of a camera has totally transformed the way I see the extraordinary in the ordinary = a great antidote to NOT seeing what is right in front of our noses….
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[...] taken from a blog I frequently read, Tom Mclaughlan: Thoughts & Pictures. In his post, “Credo,” he explores his own personal credo.After reading this post, I began to think about the [...]